Covid-19 pills are coming soon.

Merck & co. Ask the FDA to approve an antiviral pill. The pill will be used on patients who have tested positive for covid-19. There have been 762 participants who have had early covid stages who have been in clinical trials with this antiviral pill. Of those given a placebo, 45 have been hospitalized, and eight have died, whereas of those who took the antiviral drug, 28 have been hospitalized, and 0 have been killed. The FDA and CDC will now be going over these results to conclude approval or not.

Dr.Daniel Griffin, an expert on infectious disease and immunology at Columbia University, says," this is truly a game changer,this up there with vaccines but not a substitute for vaccines , we still want people to get vaccinated , but boy this is a game changer." People will have the option of going to the doctors and telling them they have covid, and the doctor will now be able to help by offering this antiviral as a prescription.

Two antiviral pills are looking to get approved by the FDA and CDC; one is the molnupiravir, Merck and co. Antiviral drug and the other is Paxlovid, which is Pfizer's product. Results from the Merck trial released last month showed the drug released risk of hospitalization by 50% and prevented deaths entirely. This will be presented to the FDA on November 30. Pfizer's official, who requested FDA emergency use for their drug on November 16, said paxlovid cut the risk of hospitalizations and death by 89%. Both drugs work by hampering the covid virus reproduces, though they do so at different points in the process.

Getting a covid test is slow enough already; getting these drugs will be a lot slower. The federal government has agreed on getting 3.1 million courses of molnupiravir for $2.2 billion. The Biden administration plans to announce a deal on paying 5 billion for 10 million courses of the Pfizer drug, paxlovid.

Both of these drugs will be available to patients for free; however, only a tiny percentage of these courses will be available to the public at first.

Health officials say the drug will be just like any and won't be for children, pregnant women, or anyone with liver or kidney disease.

Keep a lookout for news outlets on when this will officially be out to the public.